


An Exploration of Growth

by ComposerEgg



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bullying, Catholic Guilt, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Emotional Manipulation, Fangan Ronpa: Fangan Academy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Poverty, Religious Content, Therapy, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26658892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComposerEgg/pseuds/ComposerEgg
Summary: When you are three, Ichiro holds you in his arms.Blood stains your teeth by the time you’re eight.At sixteen, you learn how to grow.(An exploration of childhood, growing up, and finding hope when the world has only given you despair).
Relationships: Oshiro Honoka & Sasaki Rin (Fangan Academy)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4
Collections: Round 2: Danganronpa: Deus Ex Machina





	An Exploration of Growth

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for some pretty intense child abuse/bullying being referenced and done, and striking back because it's the only option you've got to make the pain stop!
> 
> Also Catholicism. And other whatnots. Tbh I figure the ppl reading this know the #tragicbackstory lol

When you are three, Ichiro holds you in his arms. Mother and Father argue in the dingy light of the kitchen about money, as he feeds you some of his food. The argument turns to your newest sibling, the only one your parents can spare any attention for. This is your earliest memory.

At five, you remember the wooden pews. Sit up straight, engrain the words of praise and prayer into your brain. You look forward to Sundays, because it's the one day of the week that your parents fuss over you. Make sure you look your best, make sure you do exactly as told, and you so desperately want the attention, want to please them.

Six years old, and you have to learn to survive. Ichiro does his best, but there's so many kids in this house. He does the shopping, you learn to steal food when it comes time to help put away the groceries. You learn to steal money from Father and give it to him, to get more, and a dad who drinks less.

(He's scary, when he's drunk. Loud, smelly, more likely to yell at you. He’s never hit you, not with fists or thrown objects, but the messes left behind for you to clean tell a story of how close he’s come.)

Mother watches, of course. She sees what you do. Doesn’t care, usually, because she has to access the money in the same way. Sometimes, though, she’ll _demand_ , as payment for the secret kept. You owe her, after all. For giving birth, for raising you, housing you, for not telling Father. Both parents working, and wouldn’t it be such a help, if you slipped her some of the cash she never gets to see? Or maybe take a turn talking to Father for her, just to pay her back a drop of what you owe?

She raises you well, when she deigns to raise her kids at all, instead of handing them off to the older ones. You _watch_. Observe the way she gets you all to do what she wants. The way she never faces the brunt of Father’s wrath. By seven, you understand the way favors are traded, with blackmail, nice deeds to be repaid, and chains that do not break.

Seven is when kids at school get meaner, too. Hand-me-down clothes, missed social cues, and a weak, underfed body makes you an easy target.

When push comes to shove, gravel digs into your knees, into the palms of your hands. Into your cheek, the foot that holds you there against the other. You’re told to keep your head down low, eventually they’ll stop. Grow bored.

Blood stains your teeth by the time you’re eight.

You manage to keep the teachers on your side, because you’re the one with good grades. A possible future. Not bright enough to outshine the popular kids, but enough that a slap on the wrist is all you get.

(There’s two months of a bright spot, when you are eight. A librarian, with a shock of purple hair, half the head shaved. Buttons and stickers all over. They’re nice. You look at them, and something in your chest _stirs_ with familiarity. Kinship stronger than anything you’ve felt toward your family.

They smile at you, recognize the gleam in your eyes. Recognize you as one of their own. Gives you books on _gender_ , understands when you don’t take in interest in fiction. Laughs with delight when they manage to satisfy your curiosity with _psychology_.

In the end, they disappear, as all good things in your life tend to do. But they helped define you. Gave you the spark that lit your passion.

You don’t even know their name, anymore. But it’s because of them that you know yours.)

At nine, you’ve started to sharpen your tongue. Teeth aren’t enough, when you face a cacophony of words against your ears. A bombardment of bastardized bruising _boring_ terms. They drill into you, but you can’t help yourself. Pick apart the language, the connotations. Delve into the depths of destructive descriptions and bend the truth from them.

Push comes to shove, taunts come to tears. Ichiro stopped asking about the blood on your face the moment it was no longer yours, so maybe the same will be true if you make sure it’s not _you_ who cries too.

It takes time. Reading about the human psyche, learning the way people have pressure points, and how you can use those to make them _hurt_. You don’t want to be clumsy, after all. If your first attempt fails, the rest might as well be thrown away.

But they cause so much _pain_. You’re lucky you haven’t broken a bone, yet, but no matter how sharp your nails, how deep your teeth bite, they seek retaliation for the damage you cause. As if clawing against them wasn’t retaliation, as if it were unprovoked.

At ten, you play your hand.

After school, it’s easy to goad one of your perpetual bullies into chasing after you. Getting separated from his group. Alone in an alley, your own blood smeared on your hands, you grin, and take out your new pocketknife.

(Your dad’s before now. But he hasn’t noticed it missing, or if he has, assumes it disappeared at work. Because he hasn’t caught you -- and you aren’t going to let him catch you. He’s far scarier than the ones you intend to menace with it, after all.)

The script is flipped. He’s the trapped animal, facing down the hunter, and you don’t plan to use the knife, but intimidation tactics are no good if you can’t back them up with threats on why you _should_ be listened to.

At ten, you taste more than blood and cheap food and Catholic guilt (the latter, of course, could be described by the first two anyway). At ten, your tongue is a weapon just as much as the blade in your hand. Picking apart the pest in front of you.

It’s simple, really. A bully enjoys the rush of power. They want to hide their fears and insecurities, maintain their place in the hierarchy of society. But figure out _what_ they’re afraid of? Whether it be spiders, or friends they’re lucky to even _have_ abandoning them, secrets being exposed, or the dark, and you can make something from that.

You let his friends watch, when they catch up, as you reduce someone twice your size to tears without laying a hand on him.

You don’t cut him, either, but two weeks later finds him in the hospital, for slits to his wrists. Two weeks of being the outcast, stripped of fame and glory, power turned against him, is all it takes for him to break.

Pathetic. You’ve survived ten years of this life, and in just two weeks, he’s broken more than you ever have.

At ten, you taste revenge.

(It’s a sin, of course. Anything that can taste so good must be a sin. But then again, how many sins have you committed by this point? And how many times has punishment come your way?

You don’t know where your soul lies on the scales of judgement, but you decide that if you’re going to suffer, you’re going to at least get some _enjoyment_ out of your time on this hell called Earth.)

By twelve, you’ve put three more nuisances into a similar state. By twelve, you’ve watched half your siblings die. By twelve, you’re. So tired.

If there is a god, he deserves to stand on the other end of your tongue.

Class is emptier, now. Your parents are harsher, filled with grief for children they never even knew.

You’re top of your class. Despite the stress at home, despite the lack of resources, despite the fucking _everything_ about your life, you’re top of your class.

You have breathing room, even. For a bit. Handling the aftermath as you take your seat in class.

Being smart makes you a target, though the idiots around you don’t know which ways they want to hurt.

They laugh at you, when pretending to befriend you. The kid you attempt to study with stops after two weeks, revealing it was a dare. You learn to laugh in their face, _especially_ when they pretend to ask you out. As if you’d ever want such a thing.

You know how others work, and you know yourself. Two completely separate classifications, ones which will _never_ work together.

The title bestowed upon you by school does grab your parents’ attention, though.

Thirteen is when you learn that sometimes being the center of attention is worse than invisibility at home, not just school.

You do not have free time, anymore. You call in favors from siblings more than you care to admit. Steal money for a poster from the rich kids who won’t notice, just to save yourself from going into debt.

Books are all you know. Books torn from your hands, books thrown at you, books that you get the pleasure of reading. There are scholarships in potentia, resting on your shoulders. The chance of dragging your family from the depths you all live in, so long as you can handle the weight, the tomes of responsibility.

The only things holding you back are the glares of siblings, for being the star child, and the war still waged by those who hate.

Honoka Oshiro greets you in her office at age 15, when you’ve shredded the slander against you and turned tooth and tattered claw toward another. And got caught, this time, as the student broke.

“Rin Sasaki?” she asks, as if your name isn’t scrawled on the paper in her hands. Mandatory therapy.

You sit in her room, and glare. Your glares are pretty sharp, too, not just your tongue. You’ve broken seven therapists already, and you plan to make her the eighth. They can’t help you.

You don’t _want_ help. Your strategy works well, it keeps you alive. People trying to pry and _cure_ you are wrong.

It seems she’s come prepared with a history of your case. Of the one you’ve stabbed, the two you made regret their field. Of the four others who met your teeth.

She meets your teeth too, when she errantly places a hand on your shoulder to catch you from going the wrong way.

She hisses in pain. “This way. There’s a first aid kit in my office.”

You frown, but sit on the stupid couch, and wait until she patches up the wound. It’s not the worst you’ve inflicted.

But then…

“I apologize, I shouldn’t have touched you. We haven’t established boundaries, or talked about what you’re comfortable with. I was in the wrong, and your reaction was understandable.”

Oh.

She smiles at you, and it’s dumb, but that smile is genuine. She’s your age, and she _apologized_ , when you were the one who bit her, and she cares about your _comfort_.

The flags on the wall of her office match the ones the librarian had as pins. Some, at least.

“I’m not going to press you, or ask you to share anything you’re uncomfortable sharing with me. I want this to be a space of trust, and safety. You seem like someone who has issues with trust, and I get that it might be hard. But if you can give me a chance, I’d like to prove to you that I’m trustworthy.”

You stare at her. Feel your heart pound in your chest. Adrenaline buzzing, because maybe, just _maybe_?

Hope is a dangerous thing. You _want it_.

You sit in that office, and don’t talk. She talks at you. Tells you about her day, about school. Talks about wanting to help people, until the time is up.

You show up the next day, and she smiles again. Makes sure not to touch you. Lets you sit. You end up doing homework on the table together, in silence.

It goes like this, for a bit. She’ll talk at you, while you work, writing notes in code (because the last time someone managed to read what you wrote, you faced sticks and stones and a ruined notebook).

On day six, she smiles at you, and says “Hi, Rin!”

And you… Speak. “Hello, Honoka Oshiro.”

She doesn’t comment on the formality, or you speaking to her for one of the first times. Homework is still done, but this time… She offers to help, and you nod to accept.

Honoka Oshiro is _smart_.

She catches things you don’t, gives little suggestions of improvement when she can.

Praises you on how you’re doing. Says that you’ve worked hard. Says that you have _skill_ , and not in the way your parents praise you. As if the effort you put in to work is worth it merely because you spent that effort, not because of the end result.

At fifteen years and nine months, you open up about your life. It took three months before you were comfortable enough to talk about anything. You tell her about classes, about your teachers, and your parents’ expectations.

At sixteen, you tell her about how hungry you always are, and she starts bringing you meals. Starts bringing you snacks as well, to squirrel away for when you need them, no questions asked.

At sixteen, you tell her about the kids at school, and how they get what they deserve. How the pain you endure is more punishment than any sin should incur.

Honoka nods, and hands you books on religious theory. Books on human morality, without religion soaked into them, too. Tells you about how your actions, while wrong, were understandable. The results of the pain you’ve endured. Tells you that the goal is to _lessen the pain_ , so you can stop feeling like knives and teeth and your tongue are the only things you have.

At sixteen, you learn how to grow.

At sixteen and a half, you call her _‘Noka_ , and the smile she gives you could be used to power the city.

Nicknames, you decide, are for your _family_. The ones you can trust with your heart, the ones you trust not to hurt. Proof that you care about them as much as they do you, etched into the language you use, because you _have_ to show them, somehow, what they mean to you.

Right now, she’s the only one that counts.

(She promises that she won’t be the last, in the way only her stupidly optimistic outlook could promise. You don’t want to believe her. You almost do.)

At seventeen, you break.

At seventeen, you’re worse than you’ve ever been before. And this time you know it. ‘Noka was your reason to be good. She made you want to _improve_. Even as you spiral ever downwards, you know you’re disappointing her.

You understand, now, why the ones you broke before acted the way they did. Your one lifeline has snapped, and you’re casting out in the desperate hopes to survive.

At seventeen, you die.

At seventeen, you _live_.

At seventeen, you find your family, numbering three nicknames, and you’re not letting go, ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for coming to my backstory lore dump I hope you enjoyed your stay. Wrote this cuz it's a great way to cope with depression! (Feeling a lot better now that I've written 2.5k words)
> 
> Comments/Kudos appreciated, love yall!
> 
> 💜


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